Duterte gov’t ‘imploding,’ says Akbayan rep

Akbayan Rep. Tomasito S. Villarin. Photo from https://cdm.aim.edu

The government is imploding, not because of external threats, but because of its policies and pronouncements, a lawmaker said on Wednesday.

“The Duterte administration is getting paranoid about coup plots. With the souls of more than 6,000 killed by its war against the poor/drugs haunting this government, such predicament they have is understandable,” Akbayan Rep. Tom Villarin said in a statement.

“The government is imploding with its policies and pronouncements, not because of external threats,” Villarin added.

The lawmaker was reacting to the reported ouster plot against President Rodrigo Duterte allegedly being hatched by former U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, which was already denied by the United States Embassy in Manila.

But more than coups, Villarin said, Filipinos are more worried about the spike in alleged extrajudicial killings in the country and the downward trend of our economy.

“With unemployment, rising prices of goods, and lack of livelihoods, it is high time we focus on the war against poverty,” he said.

Villarin did not cite his sources but data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed the Philippine unemployment rate falling since the assumption of the Duterte Administration.

The PSA in its Dec. 13, 2016, report said that national unemployment for October 2016 was at 4.7 percent, which is lower than the 5.6 percent recorded in the same month for 2015.

The unemployment figure from October, four months after President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in July, was 1.4 percent lower than the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent in April 2016, which indicates more Filipinos having jobs under the present administration.

Likewise, the Department of Labor has reported that it had been able to have 10,000 contractual employees regularized in the first four months of the Duterte government. CBB